


Building the Four Quarters of the Circle

by a_la_grecque



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_la_grecque/pseuds/a_la_grecque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merriman gathers the Signs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Building the Four Quarters of the Circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spiderfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/gifts).



Stone

  
He wakes on his eleventh nameday and finds that everything has changed. His gifts are laid out by his side, all the accoutrements of manhood. He had awakened with a start, but not a soul is stirring anywhere else in the camp.He looks over his gifts with solemn excitement, and reaches out for a beautifully worked leather pouch. He opens it and finds it filled with beautifully knapped tools that he knows his father has been working on for weeks. Out of consideration for his father, he has hidden his knowledge to make it seem like a secret still.

  
He dresses quickly and secures the pouch at his waist. He strides off into the dawn, moved by some sudden purpose. The boy with the face of a hawk and the voice of a lark heads into the hills where his father mines for stone.

  
He finds an unworked face with the sun just beginning to strike it, and lifts up his voice in song. Words in the language he uses every day, and words in a language he has never spoken before but _knows_ , intimately and completely.

  
The rocks sing back at him, filled with the promise of others; the promise of a circle, strong and enduring. The sun picks out a circled in the rocks, quartered by a cross, and he reaches for it, grasping the Sign that is newborn at the sound of his voice, his call. Light breaks over him like a wave, warm and engulfing. He drops to his knees, clutching at the Sign and overwhelmed by the knowledge that it brings.

  
He reaches for the pouch at his waist, and unthreads the rawhide cord securing it. Using his beautifully made new knife, he severs a portion of it, and threads his stone treasure onto it. It is a tool his father could never understand the making of, shaped by song for a purpose the boy is only just beginning to understand.  
He ties the Sign around his neck, and as he lets it drop he hears for the very first time a haunting bell-like phrase. A strange set of doors appears in the hillside. He squares his shoulders and walks through them, through time, alone.

  
Wood

  
He feels her when she awakens, light flaring out like a torch in the darkness. It is some time before they meet in her present, but once she goes through the doors they walk in all times together.

  
He meets her finally and for the first time in a rowan grove, a young woman with burning eyes. He takes her hand and forges the first link in the chain, reigniting his purpose. They smile, and touch their joined hands to a fallen tree. It bursts into flame, cold and white, leaving the surface of the trunk thickly furred with ash. She breaks their connection, and gently pulls apart the charred wood to reveal the circle quartered by a cross, smooth as if it has been polished by the centuries. The making brings him as much joy the first time as it will through the centuries, right until the very last time in Buckinghamshire manor house many eons from now.  
She touches the flint that is warm at his throat, then slips the other Sign onto the belt of her simple tunic. They feel the first rush of darkness then, stealing into the quiet grove like a rising tide. It is easily repelled the first time, simply by re-joining their hands.

They meet often, after that, in her time and in all times. They share the gifts of Gramarye they have been given, and write them together on the rocks, on the leaves of the trees, and on the wind.

  
Water

  
The years have softened her and sharpened him. There’s a fierceness to his craggy face, and his hair has grown into a golden mane. “My lion,” she calls him, eyes shining with delight. She has tales for him, she has been lost beneath the surface of the sea, deep in the realm of Tethys where there is darkness without the Dark. Many strange and wonderful things she tells him, of the White Lady and her realm.

They build a fire that burns brighter than any that either of them have seen before, on a lonely beach. Piled high with driftwood, it burns with eldritch colours and she whispers in his ear all the while of the creatures of the sea, and together they bind them. By the spell of Mana, and the spell of Reck, and the spell of Lyr, creating them anew from the molten sand and the salt air, binding them forever.

And then they take the Sign and swim with it together, down into the deep. They give it to one of Tethys’ creatures, born half of the land and half of the sea. A gift for the White Lady, if she will give it up at the proper time.

  
Bronze

  
Tiny pinpricks of light wink into existence in the gathering darkness. The circle is expanding, each new member an eager soldier in the fight. They stretch all around the world, and though they all walk together through time he cannot know them all.

The future smith he will know, though. The boy builds the mould before his awakening, crafting it from rude clay without knowing why it will be needed. He is there for the making, the young Wayland is nervous.

The smelting may be primitive, but he draws on his finesse and skill from times long distant to make his first sign. The old Lion claps him on the shoulder as it emerges, rough yet perfect, from the scorched mould.

“It was well done, boy.”

Leaving the boy to become a legend, he takes the Sign with him through the doors. His heart is heavy as he walks through time, his head bowed with the weight of what he carries. It will be the easiest Sign to give away and the hardest one to part with.

  
Iron

  
His closest connection is formed from iron and steel and the ringing of swords. The sea-eyed lord was always groomed for power, but it’s not until his eleventh birthday that he comes into his true birthright. He stays close by the boy’s side, and he is Merlin now, both hawk and lion together. The Lady has business of her own, and he must work his magic alone for now.

He brings the young king to see the making of the Sign, the last of the circle; which must be joined in this time and one other, to drive back the Dark which is rising like a storm on the sea. The young king’s eyes are wide in the heat and steam of the forge as he watches Wayland at his work. Merlin tell him it is time to learn that the smith can make more powerful weapons than swords, more powerful protection than shields. Once the iron is tempered and cooled, he drops the sign into the boy’s hand and watches him heft the weight of it, visions of the battle of Badon half-formed before his eyes.

  
Fire

  
Gwydion is always smiling when he arrives, but there is a tightness around his eyes this time. The shining city is quiet around them as they ride out towards the castle.  
Gwydion assures him that the commission is complete, but Gwyddno is still hard at work when he enters the tower, bent over his workbench and busy with his delicate jeweller’s tools.

“It’s done,” he hisses, “I have fulfilled my duty to you, Old One. You can order me no more.”  
The king offers up the sign but struggles to relinquish it.

When it is finally in his possession he lifts it to his eyes for a closer look. The Sign is exquisite, Garanhir’s very best work, truly a thing born of heat and flame – it could have risen from the depths of the earth. Exactly as he wished.  
And there, incised around the edges in tiny letters “LIHT MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN”.

“Oh, Gwyddno,” he sighs, “Your work was given freely, you know. It had to be.”

The king isn’t listening, he has turned away and is muttering to himself.

The sign burns in his hand, aflame with all the cold power of the Light, and he turns and leaves without another word. He gallops away on his grey mare, and the sea sweeps in behind him to drown the sorrows of the lost king, trapped in gold and crystal fetters of his own making.

Will

Merry is tired when the last one of the Circle wakes, blazing like a supernova. He has endured through the centuries for these last few years, fighting a battle that is almost beyond endurance. Weariness seeps into his bones when he meets the straight-haired, serious-eyed boy whose powers of endurance will have to be beyond even his imagining.


End file.
